Saint of Swords
by Scarabsi
Summary: If my information was correct, this would be the spot for the next vigilante attack of the so-called Saint of Swords. [giftfic] [MattGuy]


**Headnotes:** Hello! It's me! I used to write in this fandom all the time, but now it's been a few years and I'm a little rusty, haha. I tried my very best, so hopefully that will make up for being out of practice! Man I miss these guys.

This was written for my wonderful long-time friend Miserikordi, or robancrow on Tumblr. I hope that she can enjoy this. ^^;

**Notes:** The story is set close to the events of Fūin no Tsurugi. Some liberties may have been taken with the facts presented in the games and I apologise for any mistakes that I may have missed in editing. Special thanks for the folks at GameFAQs, without whom I would not have been able to catch up to speed on such a detailed fandom in so short a time.

I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** As always, I am not making money off this work and claim no ownership to the setting and characters. There is a small portion inside which is copied directly from the game and I claim no ownership of that either, but merely employ it to aid in storytelling.

* * *

**Saint of Swords**

_"What happened next?"_

* * *

I settled into the building nonchalantly, as I only knew how. All around, Bern soldiers marched about their way and Bern citizens avoided their gaze; wrapped in my modest rags, I kept to my part as just another peasant and looked everywhere but into other's faces.

I was used to castles and fortresses, but the lavish designs for this village's lord were far more indulgent than my usual stay, and I took a few moments to relax and admire the beautiful construction before the bitterness set in.

If my information was correct, this would be the spot for the next vigilante attack of the so-called Saint of Swords. I took a quick peek at Lord Ethol, the suspected target; he had grown fat from stolen plainsbeast meat, cloaked in an expensive velvet cape lined with nomadic beads he had not earned. It was possible, days or hours from now, that this man would be dead; while it was not my place as a Lycian to choose a side in this conflict, I couldn't help hoping that it would happen.

Studying the polished marble of the steps, I could almost picture the grassland that it had been built over. Countless Sacaen families taken captive for slavery or slaughtered on the spot and, well, isn't it just grand that all the nice soldiers like Heath had deserted?

A shout!

Villagers outside were running in all directions. Their collective movements flowed in a kind of cascade as the thing they were running from moved closer to Lord Ethol's castle. When I stood up to get a better view, I could make out the loud thunder of approaching hooves.

The last few villagers parted way and I could see a mounted swordsman thundering toward the castle, swinging his sword scabbard to deter the more stubborn villagers. As he reached the steps he moved his legs to his horse's saddle and flew off of it in a great leap; then he was in the castle, bringing his scabbard down onto the helmeted head of a surprised soldier, while his horse ran off along the castle's perimeter.

The man moved so quickly he was beyond human sight; I ducked behind a doorway and watched the soldiers rush into the hall and drop.

Then there was a hand on my cloak, and I was pulled away from the doorway while a tired voice grunted, "Leave the castle, peasant! This is now a battlefield!" and a strong arm pushed me toward the village square.

I was too stunned to move in either direction, and for a moment I forgot my mission and gaped at the swordsman, who was now guarding me from the remaining soldiers. I eventually managed an awed whisper: "You are the Saint of Swords?"

"I've been called that, yeah," the swordsman said, ducking every blow aimed at him and blocking every blow aimed at me. "Listen, either you leave or I cut you down myself, you're getting in my way."

I whipped out my concealed dagger and thrust it into the heart of the druid who had snuck behind us. The morbid spell he had been casting dissolved into the air and the thick spellbook collapsed to the ground. "Now, I don't think I'm as useless as all that," I said, and I made sure he could hear the smirk in my voice.

He pulled his sword out of the last soldier's side and sliced it into a mage standing behind him just as I put my dagger into a healer, and he really looked at me this time, peering through the tattered hood and the concealing grime. "Matthew?" he said, and now I could truly recognize his voice, the way he always said my name with that mix of surprise and exasperation.

"Haven't seen you in a while, Guy," I said. I removed my hood and let the rags drop to the floor; no use keeping up the pretense when I had just killed two people. "So, are you really here for Lord Ethol?"

The tip of his sword gave a little twitch, and I could see his jaw tighten ever so slightly. "If you're here to stop me, I'll make good on my earlier threat. Don't think I won't."

I shook my head and laughed. "Don't be absurd. As a servant of Lycia, I needed a good excuse before I could do interference in a Bern-Sacaen conflict, like killing that bastard." I brushed his sword aside with my dagger so I could step toward him and tap his nose. "Hello, Good Excuse."

He frowned, but it was that frown of his that meant he was smiling inside. He turned to look at the place Lord Ethol had been standing, but Lord Ethol had long vanished, and he sheathed his sword with a huff.

"He'll have retreated to his chambers," I said, and started walking to them. While I led him to the lord's chambers, I found myself wanting for the first time in years to gloat about having discovered the information beforehand.

I found the heavy doors to the lord's chambers and forced them open with ease, and we quickly surrounded the cowering man in his extravagant bed.

"I imagine Lord Hector will be very cross at you for this," Guy muttered as he drew his sword.

I smiled and readied my dagger. "Really? Knowing Lord Hector, I imagine he'll pay me handsomely."

.

We searched the castle for every stolen Sacaen item we could find, and he burned them in the castle's sentinel towers, both as a signal to neighboring Bern villages and out of respect for the people they used to belong to. As he kindled the fire to help it grow, he muttered prayers under his breath that I could not understand, and closed his eyes.

I watched the flames eat holes into Lord Ethol's velvet cape and the Sacaen beads curling and melting. I looked at Guy, and he didn't protest, so I kept looking. He hadn't grown that much bigger in his adulthood, but the years showed in the hardened calluses all over his hands. He was stronger, much less of a bony stick than I remembered; he'd definitely taken the time to learn to hunt. And sew, by the look of his clothes. I had never known him without clumsy stitches all over his clothing, but the seams were cleaner now, less obvious.

"I did the embroidery for this coat, too," he said, and I startled back to his face. He'd finished the prayer and was dusting soot off his hands, and had caught me staring. Despite myself, I was impressed. He fingered the colourful patterns on his coat and shrugged. "It ain't the best, but it beats doing nothing on lonely nights between fights."

I reached over and ran my thumb along the patterns, feeling at the amateur stitching and the rough thread. I expected him to slap my hand away, but he held the fabric there and let me feel it as much as I wanted.

"Still a loner, then?" I asked hesitantly. His face hardened, and he looked even more serious than ever. Given the current situation with most of the Sacaen tribes, I was going to let it go at that, but he opened his mouth. I was a little disappointed that he didn't stutter.

"I returned once." He closed his eyes and bowed his head. "They were happy to see me. My mother... she..." His fingers curled into his cloak. "She said she was proud of me..."

I couldn't stop from grinning widely, because this seemed like wonderful news, but he wasn't done. "But I didn't fit in there. Even on horseback, I am a swordsman and they are... They were archers. They had no place for me there. So I left, and..."

I knew all too well where he was going with this. "The soldiers attacked them while you were gone?" I felt my nails digging into my palm, and it would be rude to show it, but suddenly my mind was filled with Leila Leila Leila Leila. . . I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head a little, because it's been years now and it would do me no good to dwell on what's lost.

"Ha. If that were the only problem." Grinding, and I looked at his jaw and made a mental note to talk to him about caring for his teeth. "I meant to return to them. I did. I would have gone to see them every year, every month even, but. . ."

I waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have gotten stuck. "But?" I prompted.

He looked straight into my eyes, expression grim and self-loathing. "But I had agreed to meet with Karel," he said.

It's been years since all of us went on that great quest together, but as soon as he spoke the name a chill went down my spine. I fought the urge to panic, because clearly Guy had survived the encounter, he was standing right here, but it was still difficult to stop myself from worrying if anything had happened and how much danger he was in and if he would be okay and-

"What a colossally stupid thing to do," I settled for, trying to sound light-hearted but I don't think I quite managed it.

He scowled and aimed a light punch at my arm. "I was a teenager desperate to prove myself, and he was a legendary swordmaster who told me I was getting _too_ good."

"Fair point."

He rubbed his eyes with his palm, then combed his fingers through his hair. "I bested him. He was unarmed, helpless on the ground and I had his neck trapped beneath my sword. I don't know why I didn't kill him!" he suddenly yelled, and his hands fisted into his hair and pulled. "I felt that I was being honorable! Sparing the life of my teacher, or a fellow Sacaen, or an old teammate. It was stupid!"

My hands flew with all the precision of my assassin training and grabbed his wrists. "Quit screaming! They'll hear us in the next town!"

"I'm not-"

"Shush!" I could see them, now that I wasn't watching the fire and my eyes had adjusted to the night. Rogues and mercenaries were already nearing the castle, and once they climbed up here, we were up for another fight. I nudged Guy in the arm and pulled out my dagger. "Reinforcements are here."

Without another word, he expertly packed up all his belongings in one swift movement and was dragging me off to the tower's edge.

"What are you-"

"We should leave," he said. He kicked a bundle of rope off the edge of the tower wall and whistled loudly. I winced; true, it wasn't more conspicuous than the fire, but the loudness ran contrary to most of my survival instincts. He swung his legs gracefully over the edge of the wall, rope in hand, and slid down. . .

. . . to land gently on the saddle of his horse, who had come running at what I realized must have been his call. He craned his neck up at me and waved his hand. "Well?" he yelled impatiently.

I shrugged and imitated his earlier actions; since I had never done this before, I fumbled the ending and nearly dropped to the ground. He grabbed my arm at the shoulder in the last minute and swung me onto the horse.

Then we were off! I couldn't tell you if there were villainous curses drifting from the newly abandoned castle because my head was busy dribbling against horse muscle.

I was draped across the horse on my back. I quickly made every effort to turn onto my front. "We could have fought our way out of that," I shouted, attempting to be heard over the pounding hoofbeats and adrenaline and ringing. Possibly the ringing was just in my ears.

"With one person, it's usually easier to run," he responded. I would almost say that he sounded mocking, if Guy was capable of mocking people. He looked at me strangely, brow furrowed and lips pursed, eyes wide and then narrowing as if I had surprised or disappointed him. Then he pulled me up into a proper sitting position, and I clung to his shoulders like a vice. It didn't escape me that my back was creaking in a worrisome manner with every small movement.

We ran out into the plains, until there was nothing to be seen for miles around. He stopped the horse a few times to look around the area, until he finally deemed a place worthy somehow and slipped off to set up camp. I slipped off the horse gingerly, and I heard my spine crack a little. That didn't sound very good, but at least I could walk.

"Does Karel ever show up with the mercenaries?" I said, surprising myself.

He paused in his actions and then resumed them quietly. "Sometimes," he admitted.

I sat on the ground and watched him, massaging my spine. "That's why you never returned to your tribe," I said.

"If a bloodthirsty murderer is going to follow me around, I'd prefer he do it in Bern," he growled.

He set up the tent and finished laying traps around our area. He lay a thick blanket on the ground, then dug around his pack some more and fished out some elixir. He gestered for me.

"What?" I asked. I pulled my cloak around myself.

"Come on. Your back hurts, so I'll heal it."

I pulled the cloak tighter. "I can handle myself," I said.

"Really?" He sat down beside me, hands on his knees and elbows jutted outward in a strangely zany manner. "Can you reach your back?"

Uh. . . "Yes," I said. I tried to imagine myself reaching for parts of my upper spine and hid a wince. "It's fine, anyway. Leave it alone."

He frowned and watched my face, eyebrow raised. Then he put his hand on my lower back.

"Ah-!" I winced and batted his hand away. I didn't know why I was embarrassed by this, or even why I couldn't just let him service me, but the very idea was too strange to me somehow. "I can reach _that_."

And then the corners of his lip pulled up in a big smile, the one he got whenever he felt confident he could win. "I see." He put his hand on my back again, ignoring my pained hiss and deftly dodging my hands, and slid up my spine.

It hurt even worse. "Ahh!" I cried out again, and tried to swipe his hand away. "Quit that. It won't get better if you aggravate it!"

I can't recall ever being in such bad spirit around Guy before. I tried to vanish; misdirect, slip away. It had always worked on him in the past. But now, he was too fast for me; every move I made, he could quickly counter.

He pushed me onto the blanket and pulled off my cloak, then my tattered peasant's shirt. "I know you can't reach this high on your back," he said, and I could almost hear that confident smile in his voice. "You don't want to become a cripple, do you?"

My attempts to sit up were countered and quashed, so I gave up and went limp. I felt the cool sensation of the elixir dribble on my back, and then Guy's hands rubbing it along my spine. The medicine burned where it was rubbed, and as Guy ran his hands down the center I could nearly feel my spine knit back in its proper position.

Despite the unexplainable feeling of humiliation, it did feel very good. My back had started to cramp in strange and uneven ways, and it was nice to get some relief.

"You're welcome," Guy said, still smiling with his voice, and then: "Consider it a favor."

This time I managed to flip our positions and pin him, hands indiscreetly close to his throat. "Take that back," I said feverishly, while he laughed all the way through my fingers.

"What's the matter, dishonorable Matthew?" he said, and oh, his smile always came with a challenge, and how could I forget that? Stupid! "Don't like losing your hold over me?"

"No!" I responded automatically, but we both knew I was lying, and feeling the lie so acutely hurt. "No, why now?" I continued. "You know what a person will think when you're running from death and you suddenly want to settle things with him," and to my surprise I felt no lie here, and that made me want to hide.

His victorious smile disappeared abruptly and he glared up at me like stone. He'd really grown into his Kutolah heritage there. "I ain't settling," he mumbled unconvincingly. "It was a damn joke."

"It wasn't funny," I said.

He reached his hands up to settle on my lower back. "I'm still pretty young. Just being a legendary swordsman isn't enough anymore, not for my entire life." His brow furrowed even harder, and I could feel his fingers digging into my spine, pulling me down a little. "I used to think it would be, but I wanted other things too."

"And one of those things was to be free from your debt?" I snorted. "My back is better, by the way, thank you for asking."

"I guess so," he said. He trailed his hands up my spine slowly, digging his fingers in. He raised his eyes to meet mine, I suppose to check for wincing. "Those favors haunt me, you bastard. You, who taught me to survive attacks in the night, among other things, and you'll never see me as anyone but your debtor."

"That's. . . not true," I said cautiously. I wasn't sure how wrong he was, but he wasn't right. In fact, his analysis of my behavior came as a great surprise, because the idea of Guy as my debtor had never really occured to me. A pet, perhaps, and later on a good friend. Upon reflection, I realized how he might have gotten that impression, though, and. . . "You are not a debtor," I told him, but it didn't feel adequate. His fingers had just about reached my neck now, and my injury hadn't reached anywhere that high.

"So the four favors, they weren't important to you?" His eyes were flashing with something cold, and up on the back of my neck he dug his nails into my skin. "Because they were important to me. I left the work I knew to join your rag-tag army of strangers and revolutionaries because of those favors!"

It was hard to think of a good response to that, and it was even harder with his fingers digging into my neck. "You know I didn't mean that," I settled for, but that made him scowl harder.

"Bastard," he mumbled. "I don't think it's the favors I wanted, now. I think, just once, I wanted to be able to use you heartlessly the way you have always used me!"

Somehow that statement hurt, somewhere deep inside, and I started to say something, I don't know what but he was _wrong_ and he needed to know. He pulled me down roughly my my neck and covered my mouth before I could.

It hurt. My lip was crushed between our teeth, and I could feel it split and bleed. He was inexperienced, and didn't even attempt tongue, but somehow he managed to do it aggressively, and though I was accustomed to lewder kisses, this one felt more intimate. I felt vulnerable, and dizzy, and weak, and I did nothing to reciprocate.

When he pulled away, it was to take some breaths and to glare at me. I noticed that he had flipped us again, and put himself on top, and I could taste blood on my teeth, but still somehow I felt that he was the wounded one, scrambling to recover his pride, because despite everything all I could feel was a great relief, and. . . and. . .

He glared at me like he wanted to cut me down; he bared his teeth and growled into my face, "I'll stop for a favor."

"No deal," I replied, and made sure he could see my tongue as I said it.

Instead of kissing me again, he bit down on my neck. When I didn't cry out, he sucked on it. I only noticed that I was trying to touch him when he hit my hands away.

"Higher than that," I said. That stopped him again, and he pulled away to glare at me, a trail of spit beading off his lip obscenely.

"I'll keep going if you don't stop me!" he said.

"No," I sighed, "you keep stopping even though I tell you to keep going."

"Even now, you mock me?" And then something in his face dropped, and he sat back, perhaps to hide his trembling lip. "Am I s-so insignificant to you?"

This was not how I wanted to hear his stuttering return.

"You're the one using yourself as blackmail," I pointed out, and it came out more bitter than I intended. "Don't get upset that it didn't work."

"Blackmail!" and he made a breathless, desperate laugh, "I am not a prostitute!"

I probably blushed visibly at that. I had no idea he had been thinking that far. "What is this, then, if not blackmail?"

He looked up, meeting my eyes, and then he leaned toward me and laid a hesitant hand on the center of my chest. "S-some. . . Some other thing I wanted," he whispered. He added, barely audible, "for a long time."

I decided to respond by teaching him how to use his tongue.

Hours later, I brushed a few strands of sweat-slicked hair from his face and told him, "You can't die now. You have to live many more years so we can have a future. I must die before you." I refrained from asking him to meet my parents. That was just asking for trouble. Instead I said, "I'll kill Karel if I have to."

Without bothering to open his eyes, he grabbed my cloak from the floor and smothered my face with it.

The next morning he was gone. The only thing he left behind was a paper, with a date and time and location, five years from then. It was, I think in good spirit, signed "Saint of Swords."

.

I warmed my hands against the campfire I'd managed to set up as I waited for my rabbit fillet to finish cooking, and there came the shuffling sounds of dragging feet in the bushes a few feet away.

In seconds, I had my blade in my hand and whirled on the intruder, but before I could act he collapsed before my eyes, body curled in on itself.

He muttered feverishly, "Kill me. . . curses to all, end this foolish life so that I may suffer no more. . . This worthless man has amounted to nothing after all. . ."

And all I could think to say in response was, "Look at you! You're no man. You're a boy at best." His brow furrowed deeply before he lost consciousness.

Hours later, when I had checked him for wounds and rubbed his hollowed torso with leftover drops of elixir, I confiscated his exotic sword and emptied a pail of river-water onto his face, and offered him a deal. Limbs trembling, complexion greyed, he could not reject me.

.

I walk into the pub, heart pounding audibly in my chest. After five years of frantic searching, I am desperate to see him again, and it pains me how thoroughly he hid himself from me in all of that time. I follow every tip, every note about the Saint of Swords that I can find, and he is always gone before I arrive, fire blazing in the towers and soldiers dead.

I am early by perhaps three hours, because I don't want even a chance of missing him. I make sure to scan every single person in the room, just in case he is there in disguise, and when he isn't, I find a seat with a good view of the door and examine every new person who comes in, and I refuse all drinks offered me.

Three hours later, Karel arrives, and my blood turns cold.

* * *

_History of Elibe: Historical Records (Summarized); First Dragon era._

Guy - Mounted Swordsman  
Guy continued in his quest to be the finest swordsman in all of Sacae. His form was so perfected that all called him the Saint of Swords.

Karel - Saint of Swords  
Once, Karel was known as the Sword Demon. Now, he bears a new name. What prompted this change, he will not say.


End file.
